People who know me from my novels associate me with Leeds. That’s perfectly natural, as my series of books are set there – in the 1730s. But the city where I spent the longest period is somewhere else. Not even on the same continent.

I moved to Seattle in January 1986 and remained there until August 2005. Before that I’d spent 10 years in Cincinnati. I moved to Seattle on the recommendation of a friend who’d gone there a couple of years before. I had no job, no place to live except my friend’s floor, and precious little money. But it was the new start I needed.

Seattle was the most beautiful place I’ve ever lived, the only one I know where you can look out and see both saltwater and mountains, beaches and a city skyline. In the months I was discovering it, the place was a backwater in the Northwest, just up at the top left-hand corner of the US map. It had a small, vital music scene, a very active gay and lesbian community and fabulous book and record shops. And lovely independent coffee shops and cafes (such as Paradiso and the original Café Septieme)

Fast forward just a few years and Seattle was America’s Most Liveable City, which brought people flooding in. Microsoft meant that it was on the forward edge of technology (never mind that the company was on the other side of Lake Washington). That local music started to find an international audience as first Pearl Jam, then Nirvana and Soundgarden sold albums in ridiculous quantities and grunge became a word and a fashion.

The BoHo area of Belltown was gentrified, artists’ lofts turned into condos, rents and house prices all over the city rose. New clubs opened – hello Crocodile Café and Moe. The old underpinnings remained in places like the Two Bells and new ones joined them as the Tractor emerged. But the city had received a gloss.

One thing that remained a constant was The Rocket, the local free music paper. It was more than just listings. There were reviews, interviews and some damned good writing. I was lucky enough to write for the paper for several years until its demise in 2000. I’d published a little music journalism back in Cincy, but it was in Seattle that my writing career began in earnest, pushing out into non-fiction books (yes, they were mostly quickie unauthorized celebrity bios and some of them were written under a pseudonym that is better left unknown).

The Rocket was a remarkable publication, highly professional yet still wonderfully quirky, every bit as good as anything national, but still ineffably Northwest (there was also a Portland edition). It’s still missed by people who knew it, and I probably still have more pride in being associated with it (by the end I was on the masthead as a senior writer) than almost any other music journalism. It led me to so many things – local radio and then National Public Radio, reviewing CDs for Amazon when they began selling them and all the other magazines who’ve been kind enough to use my work.

My son was born in Seattle and still lives there (although a few more months and he’ll be moving to Bellingham for college). I still have friends there. The ties remain strong.

And now, in three months, I’ll be publishing my first love letter to Seattle. Not just to the Emerald City, but to the music that surged in the underground there before breaking out, to the dark side that stayed in the shadows, and most definitely to The Rocket. I’m sure the city’s changed immensely since I left. I’m not sure I’ll ever return. But it still has a big, big place in my heart, right next to Leeds.

Way back in the mid-1970s there was a British sitcom called I Didn’t Know You Cared, featuring the Brandon family. Back then it seem absolutely hilarious and it introduced me to the writing of Peter Tinniswood, who ended up writing several books about the family. The first was the wildly bizarre A Touch of Daniel and the last Call It a Canary. The spanned the 1960s in a Northern town – probably Lancashire, more’s the pity, but in them he captured the decade, and the North, with hilarious perfection.

The TV show, which came out on DVD a few years ago, hasn’t aged well, but the books remain timeless (allowing for the prejudices of when they were written and the time in which they’re set, always important distinctions); periodically I go through them all and revel in his writing. On nature he could be elegiac, but there’s also poetry of a sort in his deadpan dialogue and descriptions:

“Pat’s just this minute told me she’s expecting. So unless she falls off a trolley bus and has a nasty mishap, you’re going to have a grandchild.”

The restaurant had been opened one thundery afternoon in June. It was called The Scented Lotus Garden.

There were hexagonal lampshades with tassels. The wallpaper had a pattern of peacocks and cormorants. The menu was printed by G. Fearnley & Sons, Pontefract.

Carter Brandon was eating curried King prawns with fried rice and water chestnuts. Pat was eating liver and chips.

“It’s very continental in here, isn’t it?” said Pat.

“Mm,” said Carter Brandon, applying another sprinkling of Yorkshire relish to his shrimp crackers.

They finished their meal with lychees and custard and then they stepped outside into the autumn night.

Stars crackled in the jet-black sky. It was frosty. The frost glistened on the trolley bus wires.

Anyone who grew up in a time when going to a Chinese restaurant was an exotic treat will perfectly understand that description. It captures the time and place – and the menu – perfectly. That’s exactly what it was like. In the North. Maybe to understand it fully you had to grow up there. The humour, under the more obvious guffaws, is very bleak and black, as it should be. Even when the sun shines the next bad weather is on the way and there’s never a truly happy ending. But that’s life, and these things simply aren’t possible. Tinniswood understood that and poked at it.

His real fame came a little later with Tales From a Long Room, with the Brigadier (some of the best and funniest books about cricket), and he was a prolific radio dramatist. Next year, 2013, will be the tenth anniversary of his death. But in the books about the Brandons he created a world – more a cosmology, perhaps – that mythologises the North even more effectively than the early days of Coronation Street.

If you haven’t read him, maybe you should.

She was the daughter of a tea merchant, a man whose soul totted up life into columns of pounds and pennies. He lived in a world made from profit and loss, where China clippers slipped through the seas to arrive and clerks brought him figures and fortunes and messages from captains.

All her life she’d known the smell of that world  – the polished wood, cigars and old leather of the offices, the faint tang of salt water and, above all, the scent of the dried tea leaves that hung on his clothes, buried deep in the wool, when he came home in the evenings.

She’d hold her breath as she kissed his cheek, then move quickly away, still feeling the bristles of his beard on her lips.

“Kitty,” he’d call softly, and a few feet from him she’d exhale silently, turn with a smile and say,

“Yes, Papa?”

He was a good man and she loved him deeply. He treated his family with kindness. But the smell of the tea that shrouded him, the smell that was his wealth, was slowly killing her.

He refused to believe it. To him it was nothing more than hysterical nonsense, and impossibility.

“No one ever died from the smell of tea, Kitty,” he tried telling her gently. When she kept her slow insistence he left the room rather than argue with her then made her an appointment with a physician who tried to tell her the same. Her mother shook her head at the girl’s fancy and her younger sisters giggled at anything so unlikely.

But she knew. She knew.

It had begun when she was eleven and the governess has taken the girls to the warehouse.

“It’s only right that you see what your father does,” she told them in the cold voice that Kitty knew was no more than resentment and envy. “It pays for your dresses and the dolls you play with.”

“It pays your wages, too,” Kitty said. She’d hoped the remark would cut the woman but she’d merely nodded and replied,

“It does.”

The carriage had taken them down to the vast brick sprawl of the docks, building upon building pushed and cramped against the river, fighting each other for space. And around them, all the houses, street up street of them, looking like the ruins of a civilisation that had once been great and glorious and now left to rot.

At the warehouse the factor greeted them, escorting them first through the warren of offices where clerks bowed their heads over desks and ledgers and worked ink-stained fingers. Without any reason, Kitty could feel the sense of unease growing, her chest tightening with each breath in the rooms. It was something beyond her understanding, the way her heart fluttered and shook and her skin flushed hot in the place.

Then, finally, they were led through the door into the warehouse itself, a majestic room as big and tall as any cathedral, the light coming through high windows. Tea dust floated in the air, collecting on her face and hands as she entered and the smell overwhelmed her senses. After just three paces she knew she couldn’t move any further. It left her drunk and spinning, unable to think.

She came to outside, sitting in the carriage, the faces pressed around her – the governess hovering too close, her sisters, the factor standing back a few paces and wringing his hands with worry.

Kitty looked at them, blinking three times to bring them into focus.

“You’re all right!” the governess said triumphantly. “We were all so worried about you, my dear. You fainted in the warehouse.”

She remembered then: the way it all seemed to choke her, how she’d believed her throat would close, the fear and panic that filled her body and her mind until everything went dark.

They left then, her sisters a welter of chatter, the governess asking every five minutes how she felt. But how did she feel? As if there was less of her, as if she’d lost something in there. What it was, she didn’t know, no more than a feeling.

At home she studied herself in the mirror. Her cheeks seemed a little more pale, the blue of her eyes a little less bright. Running her hands down her arms her flesh seemed somehow thinner, as if a layer had vanished, as if she could poke through to the muscle and bone that lay underneath.

Her sisters returned to the warehouse every year, a treat for them, but Kitty would stay at home. At first her father tried to insist, then to cajole her into joining them, but once her saw the terror in her eyes he stopped his insistence.

She stopped drinking tea. She began to shrink away from her father when he returned in his work suits, suddenly sensitive to the smell of him after a day in his office. But it was impossible to escape completely, and after each hug, each bearded kiss on her cheek or forehead, she felt one more small part of her vanish from the world.

As she grew a little older she began to consider why this was happening. She read about illnesses and found nothing that resembled hers until she began to wonder if everyone was right and it was all in her head and she really was an hysterical girl. Then, one day with nothing to fill the hours, she glanced at the table in the hall. Her father had thrown a few of his business letters there when he’d returned the night before and forgotten to take them that morning. Her eyes strayed across the writing and she saw the demands he placed on the tea planters in those countries so far away. He reminded them of the contracts they’d signed, of the risks he took in transportation, and if their costs had risen so much, then perhaps they should pay the labourers less.

From there, over the days and weeks and months, when the house was quiet she’d carefully put on the leathers gloves that fitted so smooth and snug over her hands, tie and kerchief around her nose and mouth until she looked like a common bandit, and sneak into her father’s study. It was dangerous – the place smelt of him, the scent of tea a note that hung high in the air over everything – but she’d spend as long as she dare reading his correspondence. Her ears stayed alert from the smallest sound and she was all too aware of what this was doing to her. She could feel the way her heart pounded dully under her ribs, the energy it all took, but she had to know more.

She read it all, every last word and reply. She knew how he’d dealt with the attempt to form a union among the men at the warehouse, how he’d crushed it with dismissals and threats. She knew the money he’d spent in bribes of officials overseas for preferential treatment, the way he’d ridden roughshod over everything to find greater profits.

By the time she was done, she understood. But after that her gowns hung more loosely on her body than they had before, although she was still growing and ate as heartily as she ever had. Her spirit had sunk deeper. She understood.

Kitty knew that her mother and father worried about her. She sometimes heard them talking in hushed, serious tones behind carefully closed doors, and noticed the looks they gave her. But even if she’d tried, even if she’d had the words to make it all clear to them, they’d never have accepted it.

Tea was a plant. It was a commodity, a means to the money that built and furnished this house, that paid for the dressmaker, the tailor and the grocer. It could never be more than that.

But she knew.

They took her from doctor to doctor, tried this remedy and that, some pleasant, some less so. None of them worked. If they’d ever been willing to listen, she could have told them.

“Kitty,” he mother said, “we’re going out for the morning tomorrow.”

“Where, Mama?” she asked. “All of us?”

“Into town,” her mother answered. “I’ve ordered the coach for nine, so you’ll need to be ready. And yes, all of us. Except your father, of course. He’ll be at work.”

Excited, she was waiting by the door as the coachman brought the carriage round the next morning. It was a week before Christmas, a bare coating of snow and frost on the ground, the three standing tall in the hallways, decorated with baubles and candles.

Kitty sat between her sisters, listening contentedly to the quick babble of their gossip, the frivolities comforting somehow, like a bolster to hug in a cold bed. The horses clopped along merrily, the countryside changing to suburban terraces then the shops and arcades that bloomed with shoppers glancing into windows and businessmen who strode purposefully as if they were following a higher calling.

Any moment she expected the coach to stop but it didn’t. Her sisters prattled on, not even seeming to notice, but Kitty looked at her mother, the older woman giving a calm, superior smile.

“Where are we going, Mama?”

“To visit your father, dear.”

“What? At the warehouse?” she could feel the panic rising, her throat starting to tighten around her words.

“Where else would he be at this time, Kitty? It’s time you overcame these silly feeling of yours, you know. You’re almost a grown woman now. It’s not seemly.”

“But…” she began but could go no further. Nothing she could do now would make any difference. Weary, heartsick, she saw the landscape change, sliding from money to the poverty of the small back-to-backs where even the sky looked tired. Finally they pulled up at the warehouse.

I could just sit here, she thought. I could refuse to move. But then her mother was tugging at her wrist, saying,

“Get down now, Kitty. I’m not going to take no for an answer any more. Whatever these ridiculous ideas are that you have in your head, you need to get over them.”

But they’re not in my head, Mama, she thought. They’re real.

Then she was standing on the gravel, being ushered along with her mother’s hand at her elbow, half-pushing, half-dragging, the woman’s face set and stern as her sisters trailed behind.

The factor met them at the door of the building, a harried man of middle age with wisps of hair at the sides of his head, sad, bulldog eyes, bowing to the ladies as he led them towards the warehouse door.

It looked so innocuous, Kitty thought. Nothing more than bricks, mortar and wood. But already she felt as if hands were tightening around her throat, the tongue swelling in her mouth, her palms clammy inside the gloves and her skin itching.

First they passed through the offices, the way they had when she’d come here as a girl. Even the smells were exactly as she remembered them, just as if they’d waited for her return. And then they came to the door into the warehouse.

The women stood back as the factor turned the handle and opened it. Kitty could see her father there, off in the distance, talking to a workman in his buff coat, the sacks of tea leaves everywhere piled high.

“Well,” her mother said, “go on, girl.” Four words that brooked no objection.

She breathed in, her chest so tight it hurt and began to walk towards the door, glancing once over her shoulder at her mother and her sisters. They looked so earnest, so hopeful, so alive. Kitty walked through the entrance, her head held high, and gently closed the door behind her.

Two minutes later her father came out, glancing around in confusion.

“Where’s Kitty?” he asked his wife. “I thought you were going to send her in.”

“I did,” his wife objected, looking at him in disbelief. She turned to her daughters. “We watched her go through the door, didn’t we, girls?”

He pointed at the warehouse behind them and shook his head.

“That door?”

The woman nodded firmly

“But she can’t have,” her told her, exasperation edging into voice. “I was standing right there. I was watching the whole time. The only person who came in there was the factor. Then there was a draught and the door closed behind him.” He sighed and took off his glasses. “Where is she? What’s happened to her? You can’t tell me she simply vanished into thin air.”

THE END

 

It’s been a bumper year for fans of Joanne Harris. First there was Peaches for Monsieur le Curé, the third installment in the tale of the wonderful Vianne Rocher, and now there’s A Cat, a Hat and a Piece of String, Harris’ second collection of short stories.

She’s one of those rare writers whose books sell superbly well but also manage to be thought-provoking, questioning assumptions and examining ideas many people take for granted. But she’s someone who has that most remarkable thing of all, a sense of magic and wonder at the world. Sometimes it’s very dark (witness her novel blueeyedboy, for instance) and sometimes the light simply glows so brightly it’s irresistible, as with Chocolat. Magic in its myriad forms is here in these stories.

As anyone who follows her  occasional #storytime hashtag on Twitter (she tweets as @JoanneChocolat) knows, she has a deep love and understanding of myth and its power – of the archetypes of gods and elements that sit somewhere near the roots of psyche. Here they’re present overtly in a couple of stories, Rainy Days and Mondays and Wildfire in Manhattan, but with a twist; these aren’t always the all-powerful Norse gods of the old tales. Time has taken its toll on them, although redemption might be at hand.

The elements play a strong part, too, with water especially prevalent. It’s there in the title of River Song, where the water is so central and powerful, but it recurs here and there throughout the book (Hope’s feet in water and pebbles to take her mind to the coast, for example), and the path of Road Song is simply a different kind of river, one that can be swum or can sweep one away, never to return. There’s a sense, too, that Harris sees the Internet as another element, one containing good and evil, and it’s become so vital in all our lives that it might we considered that way. She finds beauty and hope in it, but also the sense of the sinister (after all, someone said magic is technology we don’t understand, if I have the quote right).

There are also gently comedic tales inspired by Elvis and the welcome return of Faith and Hope (twice!) who manage to find joy and triumph even as residents of a home for the elderly. Cookie keeps its ending deliciously ambivalent, a tale of baked goods and babies, and Muse finds inspiration in the rather mysterious owners – and cat – of an old-fashioned station café and its marvellous bacon sandwiches. It’s a book of sensual pleasures, of food, buildings and the joys that can hide behind even the tackiest Christmas.

Yes, Harris has magic. But perhaps her greatest gift is the compassion that comes through in her writing. She can be romantic, although never in a maudlin way, with the certainty of how love, in all its ways, can bring people together. A feeling of hope is the link between these stories, and that makes this not only a truly entertaining collection, not just a diversion but every bit as good as her rightly celebrated novels, and also a very powerful one.

A Richard Nottingham Story

By

Chris Nickson

 

The frost lay heavy on the grass and the branches as he walked towards Timble Bridge, his breath blooming wide in the air. The dirt was hard under his boots and the air bitter against his face. Richard Nottingham pulled the greatcoat more tightly around his body and walked up Kirkgate.

            It was still dark, dawn no more than a line of pale sky on the eastern horizon. In some houses the servants were already up and labouring, plumes of smoke rising from a few chimneys. At the jail he checked the cells, seeing a drunk who’d been pulled from the street and a pair brought in by the night men for fighting at an alehouse. Another quiet night.

            He pushed the poker into the banked fire and added more of the good Middleton coal kept in an old scuttle nearby. As warmth filled the room he removed the coat and settled to work. So far the winter had been gentle, he thought, but it was still only December. Come January and February, once the bitter weather arrived, the poor would freeze and die.

            It was the same every year, he thought sadly. He’d been Constable of the City of Leeds long enough to know that all too well. When the cold bit it was always those without money who paid the price.

            Down on Briggate the weavers would be setting up their trestles for the cloth market. They’d been laying out the lengths ready for the merchants, then eating their Brigg End Shot breakfast of hot beef and beer in the taverns, keeping a wary eye on their goods. He’d go down there before the bell rang to show the start of trading, walking around to watch for cutpurses and pickpockets, hearing the business of Leeds carried out in low whispers, thousands of pounds changing hands quietly in an hour.

            He fed a little more coal onto the fire and straightened as the door swung open, bringing in a blast of cold.

            “Morning, boss,” said John Sedgwick, edging closer and holding his hands out as if he was trying to scoop up the heat. He’d been the deputy constable for little more a year, still eager and hardworking, a lanky, pale lad with pock marks fading on his cheeks.

            “Looks like you had an easy time of it,” the Constable said.

            “Aye, not too bad,” he agreed, pouring himself a mug of ale. “You know what it’s like. As soon as the nights turn chilly they stay by their hearths at night.”

            “You wait. It’s Saturday, they’ll all be out drinking come evening,” Nottingham warned him. “You’ll have your hands full then.” He shook his head. “Get yourself home, John. Have some sleep.”

            The deputy downed the ale and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “I’ll be glad to see my bed, right enough. I might warm up for a few hours.”

            Alone, Nottingham wrote his daily report for the mayor, nothing more than a few lines. He delivered it to the Moot Hall, the imposing building that stood hard in the middle of Briggate. The city was run from there, from rooms with polished furnishings and deep Turkey carpets that hushed the dealings and the sound of coins being counted. He gave the paper to a sleepy clerk and made his way down the street just as the Parish Church bell rang the half hour to signal the start of the cloth trading.

            The merchants were out in their expensive clothes, the thick coats of good cloth, hose shining white as a sinless day and shoes with glittering silver buckles. They were moving around the stalls, making their bargains and settling them with a swift handshake before moving on to the next purchase. He saw Alderman Thompson softly berating a clothier, his face red, trying to beat the man down in price in his usual bullying manner.

            The alderman glanced around, noticed him and glared. There was bad blood between them and Thompson was loath to forget it, a man who kept grudges in his mind like a ledger. But the man had been a fool, trying to cheat a whore of the few pennies that would have been food and shelter for her. The girl had complained and the Constable had confronted the man in front of his friends, shaming him, forcing the money from his pocket and passing it on to the lass.

            He knew what he’d risked, the enmity of a man who was powerful on the Corporation. But the girl had earned her payment and deserved it; the man could afford it easily enough.

            The Constable walked up and down the road, alert for quick movements, but there was nothing. He settled by the bridge, leaning on the parapet and looking at the rushing black water of the Aire. How many bodies had they pulled out of the river this year? Twenty, perhaps? Enough to lose count, certainly. Those who couldn’t cope any more with life and had found refuge in the current, the ones who’d drunk too much and fallen in, unable to get out again. There was always death, always hopelessness.

            He shook his head and started to make his way back to the jail. Atkinson was striding out, thirty yards ahead of him. A girl running headlong down the street crashed into the man, and he batted her away idly with his arm, sending her tumbling before uttering a loud curse moving on.

            The girl picked herself up and began to walk. As she passed, Nottingham took her by the arm.

            “You shouldn’t have done that,” he told her, his grip tight.

            “Done what?” she asked, the fright in her eyes as she raised her eyes to him and tried to pull away. She was young, no more than thirteen, thin as March sunlight, cheeks sunken from hunger, wearing an old, faded dress and shoes where the upper was coming away from the soles. Her flesh was cold under his touch.

            “You know exactly what you did. You cut his purse.”

            “I didn’t,” she protested and began to struggle.

            “Do you know who I am?” he asked gently. She shook her head, her mouth a tight, scared line. “I’m the Constable of Leeds. I think you’d better come along with me.” She tried to wriggle away, but his hand was firm on her. After a few moments she gave up, hanging her head and shuffling beside him.

            The jail was warm, the fire burning bright and loud. He sat her down then held out his hand for the purse. Reluctantly, she brought it from a pocket in her dress and gave it to him.

            “What’s your name?” he asked.

            “Elizabeth, sir.” Now, with the cells so close she could see them, she was shivering in spite of the heat. “What’s going to happen to me?”

            “Nothing just yet,” he assured her. “But I can’t make you any promises, Elizabeth. Where do you live?”

            “Nowhere, sir.” He looked at him. “Me and my man and my sisters, we sleep where we can.” It was a familiar tale, one he’d heard so many times before, one he’d lived himself when he was young.

            “How many of you?”

            “Five, sir.”

            He nodded at the purse. “How long have you been doing that? And give me an honest answer,” he warned.

            “Two month, sir. But I’ve only managed to take three,” the girl pleaded.

            He sat back, pushing the fringe off his forehead then rubbing his chin. “When did you last eat?”

            “Thursday.”

            “How old are your sisters?”

            “Nine, seven and six, sir.”

            “What happened to you father?”

            “He died, sir. A horse kicked him in the summer.” He could see the beginning of tears in her eyes.

            “What was his name?” Nottingham wondered.

            “William Marsden, sir. He worked at the stables.”

            He remembered the name and the incident. The man was a farrier, experienced and good at his trade. He’d been about to put fresh shoes on a horse when it kicked him in the head. He’d died instantly. “Doesn’t your mam work?”

            “She has a bad leg, sir, she can’t walk proper.”

            “And what about you? You’re old enough.”

            “I’ve tried to find work, sir, but no one has anything.” The girl raised her chin defiantly. “I have, sir, honest.”

            He stared at her face, all the guile vanished from it now, leaving a terrified girl who knew she could be sentenced to hang for what she’d done. He hesitated for a long moment, then said, “When you leave here, go next door to the White Swan. Talk to Michael and tell him the Constable sent you. He needs a girl to help there. It won’t pay much, but it’s better than nothing.”

            Her eyes widened in astonishment and happiness as she understood he was letting her go. “Thank you, sir. Thank you. Do you really mean it, sir?”

            He nodded, weighing the purse in his hand. It was heavy enough. With a small movement he tossed it to her. As she caught it, her mouth widened into a silent O.

            “Rent a room for all of you and buy some food. Now go.”

            He stood at the window, watching her in the street, looking back in disbelief before she vanished into the inn. Off to the west the clouds were heavy and pale as pearls. If they came in there’d be snow later.

Another month, more or less, and it’ll be 12 years since my father died. I was living overseas then, and I’d seen him a couple of months earlier, before he had his final stroke and eventually succumbed to renal failure. When my mother called with the news I wasn’t surprised: earlier that day, when I came into my office, for the merest fraction of a second I saw him sitting in my chair, looking the way I’d remembered him, and I knew he was saying his farewell to me.

We can never really know or understand our parents, but the gulf between my generation and his was great than most. He was almost 40 when I was born in 1954. He’d been through the Depression and served in World War II. Some of the things he’d seen are still beyond my ken.

He was an intelligent, well-read man for all that he grew up in working-class Hunslet in Leeds and left Cockburn High School at 14, the way so many did. His own father, whom I only remember from regular visits there on a Saturday, was an irascible, somewhat feckless man, one who won a cotton mill in Dublin in a card game and moved his English family over to live there. In 1920. A man who’d go for weeks without giving his sons pocket money then lavish half a crown on each of them when he was flush. A man who seemingly made and lost money regularly but who could be surprisingly generous. When my mother was pregnant with me he had a new car and insisted my father swap it for his own wreck lest I be born on the seat during a trip.

My father was, by all accounts, a remarkably talented pianist. He had his own jazz group in Leeds in the 1930s. As a boy he relished the summers because they meant staying with a relative who ran the Victoria in Sheepscar – sadly no longer extant – with its huge garden and a piano where he could play as much as he wanted. During the war he even backed up Nat King Cole – no dud on the ivories himself – a couple of times. And once the hostilities were over he was offered a job with one of the BBC orchestras. He turned them down because he didn’t believe he was good enough.

As soon as he was able to, he grew a moustache to make himself look older and kept it all his life (adding a beard much later), even though he went bald at 26. I remember seeing a photo of him with hair and literally doing a double take; except for the ‘tache it was like seeing myself. Some men turn into their fathers, I didn’t even have to.

He was a cinema manager, a salesman with his own business that eventually went bust over a £60 tax bill and also a writer. In the late ‘60s/early ‘70s, two of his plays made it onto TV. He could have made a career from it. But he didn’t; once more, he didn’t seem to think he was good enough. But he encouraged my writing, my music, and was so proud when he held my first non-fiction book (sadly, he never lived to see the publication of my novels).

He was a dapper man, always well turned out, in a suit when younger, of cavalry twills and a cravat, taking pride in his appearance as that generation did. He never approved when I grew my hair or dressed in an old greatcoat, jeans and tee shirt. But he was willing to listen to the music I enjoyed and not dismiss it; if it was good musically, he liked it.

When I was seven he took me to the music shop that was then in Thornton’s Arcade in Leeds. The plan was to buy me a mouth organ. I did come out with that. But we also seemed to have bought a baby grand piano that sat in the front room for the next few years. But then, a year or two earlier he’d come home the owner of an expensive Wolseley car without telling my mother, and the year after I was born spent £55 on a watch – a ridiculous figure in those days.

I recall him once telling me he’d worked undercover, as a volunteer, with the Vice Squad, going into illegal drinking establishments, the shebeens as they were, and also buying marijuana back in the 1950s. It was a tale I took with a dose of salt, but it stuck with me. After he’d died I asked my mother about it. ‘No, it’s true,’ she said. ‘He really did. After you were born I made him stop, it was just too dangerous.’

But what I remember most, what’s probably had the deepest effect on me, happened when I was 14. He’d been a good salesman, one of the top at his company, but he was let go as he was considered too old at 54. Until he could sell his first play he took a job he hated (he never complained, but his silences and expression spoke volumes) to keep bread on the table. My admiration for him still knows no bounds for that. He did what he had to do.

Yes, he could be cantankerous, never willing to admit he was wrong even when facts contradicted him, and yes, we butted heads loudly and often when I was a teenager, but he helped shape me. And, I think, he still does. Except the cantankerous part, of course.

My parents lived long enough to see a number of my non-fiction books published, and they were inordinately proud of me, more so than I was of myself. To my father, who’d had a couple of plays on TV in the 1960s, it was a fulfilment of his dream for himself. To my mother…well, it gave her huge satisfaction to see me happy, making money from something I’d long wanted to do. But those books, unauthorised quickie bios of movie and music people (written under my own name and a pseudonym which, no, I won’t reveal) were satisfying only because they paid well and were done in a month. As an exercise in learning how to write they were invaluable, though, getting it down right the first time as the deadline didn’t allow for extensive revisions.

They weren’t great books but hopefully they did the job. They, along with my music journalism, paid the bills when I had a young son. They allowed me to work from home and handle much of the childcare, to be around and develop a close bond with my boy, perhaps the most valuable thing of all.

My parents were both dead by the time my first novel came out, and with each one that’s appeared I’ve wondered what they’d think of them. When there’s been good news, an accolade, I’ve wanted to share it with them. That came home to me once more last weekend, when the audiobook of my first novel was named one of the audiobooks of the year by The Independent. There was I, sandwiched between Ian Fleming (a great favourite of my dad’s) and J.K. Rowling, along with Kashuo Ishiguro, very august company. My partner was overjoyed for me, I was pretty speechless over the whole thing, but I couldn’t share it with the people who’d first encouraged my writing.

My father used to critique the teenage poems I wrote, and he’d treat my words honestly, as if they were adult. He was also an excellent pianist – in the 30s he had a jazz band – who was invited to join a BBC Orchestra and refused because he didn’t believe he was good enough. He lent me the money for my first bass guitar and amp, but only on the condition that I learnt to read music for it. On Sundays he’d do into the front room and work on his novel, never published and now long gone, set in Leeds, a tale based around one of his (and my) ancestors.

And now I have my own tales based in a Leeds long gone and largely forgotten. I have my own son, who’s read one of them, after much cajoling. He’s not a reader, but he enjoyed it, and cited it in a paper he had to write about poverty in literature, alongside Oliver Twist. It thrilled me more than I could say for him to do that. Next year he’ll be going on to university in American to study maths, a subject far beyond my comprehension, and I’m so proud of his college acceptances.

I miss my parents; I even miss the way my father had to be right even when he so obviously wasn’t. I miss the unwavering, gentle support of my mother. Each time, when I finish writing a book, I ask myself whether it honours them. All I can hope, with each one, is that it does.

1

He kicked the lad’s head, seeing it snap back hard. He heard the bone go in the nose and saw a dark arc of blood spurt before the skull crunched as it bounced off the wall. Then the lad landed, the breath pushing out of him. Something pooled under his scalp, forming a thin stream that rang along the pavement.

He prodded at the leg with his foot. Nothing. No reaction.

            For a moment he didn’t know what to do. He stared at the lad and the pool grew a little bigger. He started to run.

 

2

 

He fucking hated working Saturdays. Friday night was when Chelsea’s mam always took Kieran so they could go out. He had his pay then and she wanted to go out after being stuck in the flat all week with the baby; they could have some fun, a few drinks and sleep late in the morning. Last night they’d stayed at home, putting the boy to bed early. He’d bought a takeaway and they’d had some cans; better than no sleep and a hangover when he had to be up early. Chelz had moaned, the way she always did, and they’d ended up arguing again.

            He pulled himself out of bed and into his clothes, feeling shit. Chelsea grunted, her breath sour in his face. She’d said they should go out Saturday instead. She knew better than that. Saturday nights were for the lads. Back at the beginning, when he’d started seeing her, he’d told her that, and if she didn’t like it she could fuck right off.

            His mobile buzzed – Colin, checking he was ready, the way he did every morning. Just because he’d been late a few times. Outside, it was colder than he thought, the wind gusting hard and lifting the dead leaves from the ground. He heard a bright tinkle and watched an empty Red Bull can blow down the street. The start of November. There’d only be another week of work, a fortnight at most, giving lawns the last cut of the year and a final trim for the bushes. That was why he’d needed to work today, more money before he was laid off and back on benefits until March. Off in the distance he could hear the traffic on the ring road but round here it was quiet, just a dog barking somewhere. He lit a cigarette and tossed the empty pack on the pavement.

            The old van pulled up and he climbed in, equipment rattling in the back as Colin took off again. The boss was a big man, with broad shoulders and tattooed arms, always in the same old fucking tee shirt with the holes in it and combat pants, both of them stained green from all the grass. He’d wash them on the weekend and by the next Friday they’d be filthy again. And the fucker didn’t use deodorant. It was a nightmare; end of the day he’d be stinking as they drove home. About the only thing he did was keep his hair cropped close and that was just because he’d been a skin once when he was young.

            “We got four jobs and I got to be finished by noon,” he said, “so you’d better pull your weight for once. You got that?”

            “Yeah.” He smiled. Cheeky cunt. He was the one who used the mower and trimmed the bushes. All Colin managed was the strimming and flirting with the housewives, blagging cups of coffee through the day. Couldn’t blame him for trying, though, some of them were well fit. That one in West Bridgford had given him the eye a couple of times.

            “I mean it. I’m picking my lad up from the ex’s to take him to the Forest match. We’re not done in time you’ll be taking the bus home. I’m fucking serious, right?”

            “OK.” He litook a cigarette from the packet on the dashboard as Colin drove out along Mansfield Road and took the turning into Mapperly.

 

He was home by half-twelve, surprised by the silence when he unlocked the door. Usually Kieran would be banging away at something and Chelsea would have her music playing to drown him out. Maybe she’d taken him to the park or off to the shops. He took a can of Stella from the fridge, loving the way the first gulp took the edge off his thirst. Then he saw the note on the table – Daz, we gone to mum’s. Staying over.

            He tossed it in the bin along with the empty can. At least he could get a nap in peace without the kid bawling. He loved the lad but it did his head in sometimes, the way he could go on and fucking on. And all Chelz did was ignore it or just say ‘That’s enough, now,’ when Kieran needed a good slap to shut him up.

By eight he was showered and smelling right, wearing the shirt he’d bought the week before, the G-Star jeans and the Bench hoodie, a ready meal curry and three more cans of Stella in his belly.

The taxi was booked for half past. He was meeting the lads at the new bar across the square from the Council House. They’d start with a few drinks there and go on somewhere else. By the time he got home he’d remember fuck all about it and tomorrow  his head would be banging but that was what a good night was all about. His phone beeped, a text from Chelsea – miss u bbe.

The bar was Saturday night busy, loud talk, people dressed up, the music banging, everyone drinking and looking around hopefully.

“Pint of Stella, mate,” he said, spotting the others at a table in the corner. “All right?” he shouted as he walked up, slapping Matt so hard on the back he spilt his lager. Terry and Rhys were already roaring, empty shot glasses on the table. He grinned. Yeah, it was going to be good.

“You all right, Dazzer?” Rhys asked. He was still on Jobseekers’, living with his mum up in Sneinton and doing some labouring cash in hand a couple of days a week. They’d been mates all through school, suspended together a few times before Rhys ended up excluded for setting fire to the toilets.

Matt was wiping beer off his shirt.

“Cunt,” he said, but he was laughing. He’d been a year ahead of them all, the leader, the mad fucker who got stuck into every fight. But he was smart, too, went on to college and came out an electrician earning good money. He’d been married for three years, the names of his kids tattooed on his neck. Not that being wed stopped him on a Saturday night if he was in the mood and the girl was willing.

Terry was the one he didn’t know well, some mate of Matt’s who’d come out with them someone when City were away. He seemed to like a laugh, but he was quiet, he didn’t have the history with them. He wasn’t sure he trusted the lad.

Matt stood and raised his glass. The others followed him. It was the way they started every night out.

“To Alan, the stupid twat. Just a few months to go.”

They drank in silence for a moment, then Matt finished, the way he always did, “Silly cunt, getting caught.”

Alan had been part of the mob lobbing stones at Canning Circus police station during the riots the year before, getting his face caught on CCTV. The cops had come for him at six a.m., pulling him from his bed in his boxers, never mind that his mam was yelling he was innocent, and he’d gone down for two years. Out soon if he kept his nose clean.

He’d been texting the night it happened, telling them to get their arses down there. Daz had fancied a bit of thieving, maybe come home with a wide screen, some other stuff, good trainers. But Chelz told him straight that she’d walk out with Kieran if he did it and her face said she wasn’t pissing about.

 

By eleven they’d been on to a couple of different places and end up in a bar by the canal, gathered around an outdoor heater on the patio. Matt had tried it on with a hen party and they’d told him to fuck off, snotty cows. But if they were still here in a couple of hours…he drained the glass and felt the phone buzz in his pocket. Chelsea. She always did it on a Saturday night, couldn’t give him any peace.

            Amber cm rnd n told me bout u n her 2 wks ago.

            Fuck. His fingers moved fast.

            Wot I do?

            U no.

            She lying cow.

            No she not.

            Bbe I luv u u no tht.

            fuck u.

            He was sweating now, all the good buzz drained away. Shit. He didn’t think she’d ever find out about Amber. Why did the silly cunt have to start feeling guilty? She’d liked it well enough when he was fucking her.

            I do honest.

            will get things tmrw. Staying at mams w Kieran.

            Someone put a glass in front of him and he drank. Fuck. He looked up as he heard his name.

            “What?”

            “I was saying you never got in a fight at school,” Rhys said.

            “Yeah, I did,” he objected. “You know I fucking did.” He felt the anger coursing in him. He’d have to talk her round.

            “Who?”

            “Davy Arms.”

            “Davy Arms?” Rhys asked, his voice rising in disbelief. “You lying bastard. You’d run a mile rather than fight.” He looked at the others. “He makes butter look hard, does Daz.”

            They all started laughing. Laughing at him.

            “You think I wouldn’t hit someone? You reckon that, do you?”

            “I think you’d shit yourself, mate,” Matt told him. “Never seen you near when there’s a ruck on.”

            “Fuck you,” he shouted, the rage boiling, and a few heads turned before looking away quickly. He knew his face was red, but he didn’t care. “I tell you what, right? We’ll go out on the street right now and I’ll take on the first bloke we see.” He stood up, pushing the chair back so hard it fell over. “Yeah?”

            Matt glanced at the others.

            “Go on, then,” Terry said with a grin. “I want to see this.” He drained his pint. “Come on.”

            He went out ahead of them, pulling up his hoodie as they left. The phone buzzed in his pocket again but he ignored it. They started to walk away from town, the lights of the castle up blazing away on the hill. His fists were bunched, his mouth set hard. Fuck them. Fuck them all. He felt the fury churning inside. Yeah, so, he’d never been in a fight? Didn’t mean he couldn’t do it. Didn’t mean he didn’t have any bottle. Fuck Chelsea, too, whining cow. He’d only gone with Amber ‘cos she’d had a strop on and he’d gone out pissed off. It wasn’t anything.

            He saw the lad coming, on his own, hands in his pockets, head down. Long hair, looking like a fucking student in his skinny jeans and Converse. He waited until he was ten feet away and said, “You.”

            When the lad glanced up, he continued, “Yeah, you. Got a light, mate?”

            “I don’t smoke.” The lad started to turn away, looking for an escape, ready to cross the road, to take off and run. He could sense the fear and moved closer.

            “Cunt.”

He pushed the kid hard, watching him bounce off the wall then went in and punched him, once, twice in the gut, the way he’d seen the boxers do it on telly. He could feel the fire inside. The shouts of the others seemed to come from miles away, like a quiet roar.

            He saw the lad fall down and start puking, the vomit all over the pavement – he danced back so it wouldn’t go on his shoes. Very carefully, he picked a spot, drew back his leg like he was going for goal. He kicked the lad’s head, seeing it snap back hard. He heard the bone go in the nose and saw a dark arc of blood spurt before the skull cnuched as it bounced off the wall. Then the lad landed, the breath pushing out of him. Something pooled under his scalp, forming a thin stream that rang along the pavement.

He prodded at the leg with his foot. Nothing. No reaction

            For a moment he didn’t know what to do. He stared at the lad and the pool grew a little bigger. He started to run.

 

He ran over the bridge and along the canal, dodging in and out of the pools of light. The echo of his footsteps slapped back in his ears. He didn’t know where the others had gone, he just needed to get away from there. He took the pathclose to the Magistrates’ Court and came out across from the railway station, panting, bent over, hands on his knees, his heart pounding as if he’d just done a Mo Farah. Sweat was running down his back, and there was a deep roar inside that wanted to explode. Traffic was moving, the sound of engines, a line of taxis, like he’d suddenly come out from nowhere and discovered life. He forced himself to stop, holding on to each side of his head and tried to calm himself down then dragging his hands away in case anyone noticed. He didn’t want to be remembered.

            The lad couldn’t be dead. He hadn’t even given him much of a seeing-to. Someone would come along and find him then he’d be off to A&E and he’d be out in a day or two. That had to be right. Fucking had to be.